Takes snapshots and videos and lets you annotate them with text notes.

Organizes images/videos automatically in folders based on the date.

Highly customizable user interface and recording options.

Designed to stay resident in the system tray and be triggered by hotkeys, for users who intend to use it throughout the day.

It is still in very early beta stage, so expect:

Very rough edges

No help file to speak of

You need to really configure it and experiment to get good initial webcam configuration settings.

Noteworthy features:

All video/image/notes are standard files stored in normal directories on your disk that you can work with in other programs. Notes are stored in standard standalone .txt files with same base name as their associated image/video files.

An example usecase for Webcam Video Diary:You want to be able to take image snapshots from your webcam throughout they day and annotate them with notes, while you are working:

Configure a hotkey to trigger an image capture.

Configure it to minimize to the tray.

Configure it to switch to media file view after taking an image capture.

Now just minimize the program to the tray. When you are ready to take a new image, hit the hotkey; image snapshot will be taken and filed into the folder associated with the current date, and pop up with the cursor in the notes field for you to enter your notes for the screenshot.

You can configure the program to keep the video connected at all times for fastest response, or to only connect the webcam when an image snapshot is triggered.

This application is not going to be useful to many people, but if you are someone who thinks you can benefit from it, it is *VERY* important that you take some time to experiment with the different resolution and compression choices available in the options. If you do not do so, you will end up with huge video files that have lots of dropped frames.

I could use assistance with finding a good set of reliable settings for some of these values; and please do share your experiences finding a good combination of resolution/compression values.

I won't be able to give other feedback before December 28, but I've quickly tried it and I can say that the camera doesn't work (I get no video, just black). It's a built-in webcam into an Acer notebook, usually it just works (e.g. with flash apps/websites).

I think this is a wonderful idea for an app there mouser, excellent work!

I unfortunately do not currently have a webcam hooked up, but I definitely own one. If I can find it, this might actually give me a reason to use it! Reminds me of Avatar haha. It's an excellent idea though, I hate journaling. This would actually get me to do it.

insert_nick, that is strange.. i wonder what is unusual about your video camera device that makes it not available to the webcam library. since this is my first experience coding for such a thing, let's see what other reports we get from other users about compatibility with their cameras.

mouser, 1.02.01 works for me too! It's a great app, with some more features how nice it would be for those lucid dreaming purposes that I wrote about before :) Also, the same features would be useful to take quick but effective notes about ideas when they pop into mind (and I can think a lot of other possible uses too...)

PS: could you post a notification in this thread whenever you update the software? (I didn't notice the availability of the 1.02.01 version).

Please do start posting feature ideas and bug report -- but lets do those in new threads in this section. I'm very interested in hearing how people use the program or want to use it.

Could this program maybe be portable?

All of my programs can be used portably. Just unzip the setup program with any unzip program (rename extension from .exe to .zip if you like). Then edit the ConfigDir.ini file (rename ConfigDir_Sample.ini to ConfigDir.ini) and make the first line: PORTABLE=TRUE

All of my programs can be used portably. Just unzip the setup program with any unzip program (rename extension from .exe to .zip if you like). Then edit the ConfigDir.ini file (rename ConfigDir_Sample.ini to ConfigDir.ini) and make the first line: PORTABLE=TRUE

Awesome, uninstalled and using it in portable mode now.I see the mouse pointer changing into a cross that I can drag on videos and pictures to make a rectangle, that can be moved and resized: what is it for? It seems that it is not saved...